The point of this website is to provide you with interviews. Frankly, I tire of reading 2000 word essays from Joe in Poughkeepsie giving you his view of the inside of Thom Yorke’s head. To that end, must I write a flowery into to every interview we do?! Obviously, we think each band is good. That’s why they’re here. No corporate sponsorship= no bands that we don’t stand behind.
So, here’s my new standard introduction:
Flats: band. Good. Loud. England. Punk.
Drummer Samir Eskanda talked. We listened.

TDOA: How did you guys all meet and start making music together, and where does the name Flats come from? Googling you guys is fun, found lots of great deals on apartments in London.

SE: Flats met around gigs in London. We got to know each other through music. Me and Craig put on nights and Dan DJ’d for us a few times. Him and Luke met a similar way. When Dan told me he was forming a punk band and needed a drummer, I decided I was one on the spot.
The name is a take on a Japanese noise band called High Rise.

TDOA: The sound of your music is pretty straight forward, loud & brutal punk rock with echoes of a number of possible influences here and there, what is your writing and recording process like? Is there a lot of writing done on the road?

SE: We work pretty quickly.
Ideas can come from anywhere and songs can come from nowhere. We all get involved with what the others are doing musically, making suggestions for beats, riffs and vocals. At the moment we are writing our debut album in a great room round our way. It’s fun. We’ve always engineered or mixed our own records and we’re trying to use that experience for the LP.

TDOA: How do you feel about the music scene in London? Many publications are calling Flats the saviors of punk rock in that scene, do you feel connected to it?

SE: We felt that the scene in London was getting stagnant. Any old spiky indie shite would do for most people for far too long. So we don’t feel a part of that. There are some new bands we all like but they’re few and far between. We saw Grazes from Sheffield the other night, heavy shit.

TDOA: So Kevin Sheilds and J Spaceman are big fans, BBC has been giving you some play, and NME is saying you rule. Pretty awesome, are you guys excited about all of this?

SE: Of course it’s flattering to get that sort of attention. At the moment we are just getting our heads down and working. We can’t wait to take our new tracks on the road.

TDOA: In it’s original inception punk wasn’t supposed to last. It seems like you’re lashing out at rock stars that have stayed beyond their usefullness. But what happens if you guys really start to make some money? What would you say if it’s ten years down the road and you’re still at it?

SE: I think that initial ’76 outburst of punk promised too much, in a way. And has been endlessly hyped since then. But the social environment that it arose from never really went away. If we can keep doing this for a few years to come we’ll be fucking ecstatic.

TDOA: “Hope I die before I get old” is one of the greatest failed promises of all-time. Do you begrudge people like Pete Townshend or Paul Weller for failing to stop while they were ahead?

SE: At the end of the day, it’s their choice to attempt to stay relevant. It’s just fucking tedious

TDOA: If you handed someone an album to change their lives, which one would it be?

SE: Our forthcoming debut, hopefully. In the meantime check out Rudimentary Peni – Death Church

TDOA: One of my biggest pet peeves is going to see a band live and seeing people more interested in how long the line at the bar is, or being able to hear the person to my left talking about what they made for dinner last night, these shoes don’t go with this outfit, I wish I didn’t have work in the morning, etc. Just doesn’t feel like being at a rock n’ roll show at all. Your music doesn’t seem like it would allow for that in a live setting, it has a force,volume, and feeling to it that is pretty consuming, what is the typical Flats show like?

SE: Apparently we split a crowd pretty well, not that I can tell from behind the kit. From where I sit it feels pretty riotous. You’d hope that people will get the idea and start smashing their foreheads into the PA or whatever. Up to this point we have been doing support slots for bands that don’t sound anything like us, so it’s funny to see some people looking genuinely confused. We are looking forward to our first headline tour in March.

TDOA: When can we expect to see you guys playing some shows in the States?

SE: As soon as possible, really. I wish I could say for certain. Hopefully later this year.

TDOA: Any interest in digging into politics? What are your feelings about the U.S., now that Obama is around and Bush is a fading memory/nightmare?

SE: We have our own ideas. But as a band, our fury is not necessarily drawn from political sources. It’s more personal than that, and Dan’s lyrics speak for themselves I think.